Mainstream economics maintains hegemony because it offers tools and language no alternative matches.

Evidence

Although I’m clearly to the left of most people in the economics profession (including a fair number who would call themselves heterodox), I’m happy to identify myself with the mainstream research program in economics. The first reason for this is one of personal/political strategy. Starting from broadly social-democratic premises about the way the world works, I’m concerned to identify and advocate policies that will lead to better outcomes for society as a whole and particularly for the working class and the disadvantaged. Mainstream economics provides a set of tools (the theory of public goods, externality and market failure, taxation and income distribution) to do the analysis and a widely-understood language in which to express the results. No existing alternative body of thought in economics comes close to this. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 54

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Mirowski’s ‘neo-liberal thought collective’ thesis: Quiggin accepting mainstream tools as the only shared language is a micro-instance of scientists being absorbed into the collectivity. — connects to: Economic abstractions are historically determined, not universal or extra-historical; Mainstream economics dismissed dissenting figures for lacking mathematical rhetoric — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1772
• ADDENDUM: Could be tagged ADDENDUM only if strongly tied to the three articles, which it is not; leaving as XREF-type connection to reader’s austerity-reading thread.

Broader Connections

• Economic abstractions are historically determined, not universal or extra-historical #corroborates (0.80)
• Mainstream economics dismissed dissenting figures for lacking mathematical rhetoric #exemplifies (0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1772